


It Takes a Village

by flashforeward



Category: Z Nation (TV)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-13
Updated: 2018-12-13
Packaged: 2019-09-17 14:19:51
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,102
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16976184
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/flashforeward/pseuds/flashforeward
Summary: Parenting is hard enough at the best of times. The Zombie apocalypse is far from the best of times.





	It Takes a Village

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Deifire](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Deifire/gifts).



> Thank you to Froodle for betaing!

**It Takes a Village**

**A Quick and Dirty Guide to Parenting in the Apocalypse**

 

" A sk your father."

 

It isn't a phrase Warren ever thought she'd say, especially not now, in the midst of all of this. But Lucy's questions can only really be answered -  _ should  _ be answered - by Murphy. Lucy rolls her eyes and glares at Warren and Warren's preparing for a full teenage blow up, but Lucy just crosses her arms over her chest and storms away.

 

Hopefully to go  talk Murphy.

 

**

 

"Ask Warren."

 

Lucy lets out a frustrated squeal and storms off into the night, sitting down next to Doc where he's keeping watch.

 

"What the hell did I do?" Murphy mutters, picking at the grass.

 

Warren appears, sits down next to him, looking over at Lucy, who's leaning her head on Doc's shoulder. "What'd you tell her?" she asks, turning to him.

 

"To talk to you."

 

Warren rolls her eyes. "Murphy you're her father," she says. "You're supposed to tell her this stuff."

 

"I don't know what I'm doing."

 

"No one does." Warren sets a hand lightly on his arm. Only for a second, but the warmth of it seems to fill him before she pulls away. "Especially not now. But questions about her mom, about you , about what happened... Those aren't things the rest of us can answer."

 

Murphy shrugs, head down. He knows she's right but  he's also not sure what he can offer Lucy. He missed everything - part of that comes down to the nature of his daughter, but  _ he _ decided to leave her. He wants to blame the group, for not trusting her or him, but he chose to go on without her. He thought it was what was best, but now, looking at this girl who should only be a few years old but is in her twenties already... He's realizing how much he doesn't know about his daughter. And that's on him.

 

" Do  _ you _ think I did the right thing?" he asks, voice low and quiet. He's not sure what answer he's hoping Warren will give, is kind of afraid to hear what she thinks of his parenting skills. When she's quiet for awhile, he almost says to forget it, almost tries to brush it aside as not important.

 

But then, "I don't know," she says. "You did what you thought was best at the time. That's all any parent can do."

 

Murphy nods slowly, looks over at Doc and Lucy. 10K's joined them and they're talking and Lucy's laugh carries over on the wind, tugging at Murphy's heart. He looks down again. "I wish I knew what the hell I was doing," he says. And he knows Warren knows it's not just about Lucy, it's about all of this. The apocalypse, the  cure, all of it. 

 

S he lays her hand on his arm again, and this time she leaves it there. It's all he can do not to slide his arm up and take her hand, intertwine their fingers like some hopelessly romantic teenage boy. He sits still, focused on the feel of her palm on his forearm, the weight of it and the heat of it, lets it ground him.

 

"We all do," she says quietly, squeezes his arm, then stands. "I'm going to send Lucy back over here," she says, looking down at him. "And you're going to put your dad hat on and talk to her."

 

She doesn't move until he nods.

 

He still doesn't know what to say, but he has to say  _ something _ . He'll figure it out, he guesses. Hopes.

 

He'll have to, really.

 

**

 

"Hey, Lucy," Warren says quietly, sitting beside her. "Your dad wants to talk to you."

 

Lucy snorts. "Sure he does," she grumbles, but she lifts her head from Doc's shoulder. "Does he  _ want _ to talk to me or did you tell him he wants to talk to me?" she asks.

 

Warren gives a sad half-smile and shakes her head. "I know it's hard to believe, but he really is trying," she says. 10K stifles a laugh, tries to disguise it as a cough, but it's obvious he has as much trouble believing Murphy's trying as Lucy does. Warren shoots a glare at him over Doc's head and he stands, mumbling something about checking the perimeter as he walks away.

 

L ucy hugs her knees tight to her chest, stares off into the night. " Well, I don't want to talk to him," she says, stubborn and angry.

 

"That's fine," Warren says, wrapping an arm around the girl's shoulders. "For now. But you're going to at some point. Especially if you want to know-"

 

"Why he left me?"

 

"Among other things," Warren says. She gives Lucy a light squeeze and blows out a sigh. "Parenting at the best of times ain't cut and dry. And this definitely isn't the best of times."

 

Lucy snorts. "He _left_ me," she insists. "That looks pretty cut and dry to me."

 

"And that's why you need to talk to him." Warren wishes she had answers for Lucy. Wishes she understood even a fraction of what goes through Murphy's mind. She gets the self preservation instincts that have kept him alive this far, but she can't pretend to understand his decisions after Lucy was born. Maybe it's because she was never a parent, or maybe it's the whole part-zombie thing he had going on at the time. But even if she did, even if she could somehow read Murphy's mind, she still wouldn't be the one to talk to Lucy about all of this.

 

It might take a village, but Murphy is still her father and some questions only a parent can answer.

 

"Fine," Lucy says, standing. "I'll talk to him. But," she crosses her arms over her chest and glares over her shoulder at Murphy, "I'm not going to like it."

 

Warren lets out a quiet chuckle. "Welcome to being a teenage girl," she says.

 

Warren watches Lucy walk back over to Murphy, watches her speak to him softly before sitting down beside him, legs bent and arms wrapped around her knees. She looks so young, more like her actual age than the age she appears, and Warren's heart hurts a little at the thought that, more than any of them, Lucy's never known any other life. Any other world.

 

She sighs and turns away, giving father and daughter some privacy. Doc glances at her, but wisely doesn't say anything. She looks out at the darkness beyond 10k's shadow and feels grateful that it's _all_ of them, not just Murphy, bringing Lucy up in this dark world.


End file.
